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Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon vs. The Daily Woman Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become. C. S. Lewis The interpretation of the use of characters, a common theme, place, incident, and idea may vary from reader to reader.
Literary critics often fail to come to one conclusion concerning various authors and their works. However, it seems that analyzing Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Near Zaman's The Daily Woman is completely a different story. The present paper examines Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon and The Daily Woman, compares and contrasts the use of characters, a common theme, place, incident, and idea and states that despite the fact that these writers and their literary styles are completely different, both stories revolve around the social light, the society with its faults, insights into human sense of self and pride, appealing to everyone and standing the test of time, providing what is called an image of magic realism. Marquez has always been preoccupied with the magic realism view of the society. Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon is a story - symbolic interpretation, where fantasy and real world is brought together in a whimsical combination, and, merging, they reflect lives and conflicts of the whole world. In this story one can easily find slight touches of Spanish baroque, culture, the influence of European surrealism and other modernist directions, composing an amazing, delicate and life-asserting mixture.
Although it may be quite difficult to extract one idea from this amazing story, one of the most important ideas is that art is something that is extremely necessary to human lives. It is like a food, something without nobody can live, as both of them give people vital sources for existence food nourishes the body and art nourishes the soul. The man is not perfect in case he has no food to feed the body and art to feed his soul. At the same time, Zaman in The Daily Woman follows almost the same objective. The main idea is also revolves around society and its obsessions, faults and priorities. Although this story is about a woman, a domestic maid, it still has much in common with Marquez's idea.
What concerns the themes, both authors masterly build the plot of their works around powerful and strong themes. Marquez introduces such themes like greed and generosity, the lack of love between a couple, and the theme of solitude. At the same time, Zaman is more focused on the themes of solitude, the destiny of women in the country by the example of Fatema, and portrays important problems of society, introducing the dream of a non-violent and overall better and happier society. For example, contrasting greed and generosity, Marquez tells the story of a poor carpenter, a protagonist of the story. Balthazar has a heart made of gold, while his concubine is the embodiment of what is called greed.
The protagonist wants to give the cage, which he was building so long, for free to a child and says: After all, that is what I made it for I made it expressly as a gift for Pepe. I did not expect to charge anything for it (p 155), but Ursula forces the carpenter to ask sixty pesos for it, a large amount, which the boys father, Jose Montreal, refuses to pay. The relationships between Balthazar and Ursula also show that this couple has almost no love. Although they live together approximately four years, they did not marry, and, while reading the story, the reader gets an impression that Ursula is the woman who does not deserves marriage.
Although these themes find almost no reflection in Zaman's The Daily Woman, there is one theme that occurs in both stories, the theme of solitude. In Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon the theme of solitude is portrayed in a style, peculiar to Marquez. At the end of the story, the protagonist lies down in the street, making impression that he is dead. However, no one helps him or asks what has happened to him. Even women walking to the church do not bother to offer him assistance. At the same time, in The Daily Woman, Fatema feels loneliness and isolation from the other world.
This theme of solitude is, probably, one of the most interesting and prominent themes in this story, because to a certain extent, it provokes the thought that solitude is the natural condition for all people. However, to be alone, Fatema needs the presence of other people near her, because only when the person knows that there are other people somewhere near, she can feel and experience solitude. Also, in contrast to Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon themes, Zaman places much emphasis on the image of woman, the destiny of common women in the country and exhibits our culture with no mercy. She also dwells on such themes such as devotedness, self-sacrifice and other social themes. For example, this can be clearly seen while reading the abstract when a pregnant woman, almost dying from starvation, has no other thought in her mind except of looking after her sick mate, although he did not make extra effort to make her life easier. This excerpt show how mean the society, Fatema lives in, is: .
And who would marry Fatema now? A woman who had killed her husband and child? Fatema's striking self-sacrifice makes the reader think about social injustice, and the episode that follows later, when she gets a reward in return for her daughter, leaves an impression that a girl is not so important than a boy. Both Zaman and Marquez masterly use characters to inspire the main ideas of their works. The characters are human, very emotional, tragic but at the same time alternately humorous. At first glimpse, Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon and The Daily Woman are very simple, but while reading the stories again, the reader gets lost in reflections.
Both a woman protagonist, Fatema, and a poor carpenter were carefully selected to produce an unforgettable impression on readers. In The Daily Woman the protagonist appears as a woman dominated by males. Zaman wants to show how does one feel living a life of an ordinary woman, who is always treated as inferior then men. Fatema is the image of a woman who has no rights, the woman, who is working and is completely lost in a daily routine, having no time to wake up and look around the world. By the masterly use of characters Zaman shows how women and men can be different as they live in conservative minded society. By the example of a female protagonist, Zaman shows that in the world women and men can be not equal, as there are too many barriers imposed by society.
The Daily Woman is a story of life of a common woman, a story of gender and gender discrimination, daily activities of female and male behaviors, and social superstitious in a male dominated society, a woman who, overcomes poverty by cooking tasty dishes from kitchen discards like chicken skin. Marquez's use of characters is also very impressive. The author managed to create a unique portrayal of nonfictional male and female characters. He obviously succeeded to create an interconnected universe and a brief narrative that reminds us that of Hemingway and Faulkner.
His characters are very realistic, driven by the primary passions, - greed, thirst for power and others. The author gives a pulsating and vivid life to Balthazar, Ursula and secondary characters, offering readers a fragmented portrayal of social disintegration caused and provoked by violence. It seems that both Marquez's and Zaman's works are so interesting and impressive not only because of their perfect literary style, playful and rich use of language, but also in harmonic combination of literary and somewhat folklore traditions that attach their works the tones of uniqueness, peculiarity, freshness and realism. Both authors employ foregrounds and backgrounds, interior monologues and flashbacks, so that the narration calls attention to itself. Both authors managed to create different layers of meaning and it becomes really interesting to try to understand them all. In The Daily Woman and Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon the authors consciously leave elements of short stories in a somewhat ambiguous and vague style.
In order to read and completely understand these stories, the reader must have desire to read stories and at the same time allow for a point of view completely different if not opposite from the readers own expectations. For example, the end of Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon is completely different of what the reader might imagine while reading the story from the very beginning to the very end. In conclusion it can be said that although literary styles of Marquez and Zaman are quite different, their works have much in common, as both of them, to one extent or another, are focused on social disintegration, solitude and other important issues, earning the authors the reputation of being the greatest living writers.
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Research essay sample on Balthazar Marvelous Afternoon Vs The Daily Woman
